27 February 2014

Earlier this
month, ARTE ran an interview with Tamaki Okamoto in order to learn more
about her Paris-based production/distribution company CaRTe bLaNChe which has
become a sensation at European film festivals.
She is the European distributor of a new wave of Japanese independent
animators and experimental filmmakers like Atsushi Wada, who won the Silver Bear in 2012 for his animated short
The Great Rabbit (2012). She also represents some of the films of
young artists such as Mirai Mizue, Isamu Hirabayashi, Tadasuke Kotani, Yoriko
Mizushiri, Shin Hashimoto, and TOCHKA, among others. CaRTe bLaNChe also distributes the recent
works of more established experimental filmmakers such as the legendary Keiichi Tanaami (see: Chalet
Pointu DVD) and Keita Kurosaka (Midori-ko). Their catalogue also features some
non-Japanese artists such as Hakhyun Kim’s
Greeum and Cédric Dupire and Gaspard
Kuentz’s exploration of the Tokyo music scene We Don’t Care About Music Anyway (2009).

I have
embedded the interview below. It can be viewed in German or French. For those of you who speak neither, I have translated
the interview into English below, beginning with the introductory blurb from the ARTE
website:

The
Great Rabbit and other films by [Atsushi] Wada are part of the catalogue of
works distributed by the Paris-based Japanese Tamaki Okamoto. Far from her native land, she has developed a
unique perspective on animation. Artists
and filmmakers who make works that are a far cry from mainstream manga, but
also a far cry from the well-worn Kafkaesque paths of the usual festival and
television markets, have found in her both a supporting voice and a
producer/distributor.

Who is this woman whose company CaRTe
bLaNChe has become such a talking point [at the Berlinale]? How does she work, and what motivates her
work?

Interview by:
Catherine Kohler (sp?) and Daniel Pfeiffer

Narrator: Three years ago, Tamaki Okamoto established
her own production company called CaRTe bLaNChe in Paris. She is known for excellence and originality
and has a unique taste for extraordinary aesthetics. Like the owner of an art gallery, she looks
after her artists and promotes their projects to great international acclaim.

Tamaki
Okamoto (TO): I try to keep a small catalogue. That’s not always easy to do. At the same time, it’s not easy to find films
that one really falls in love with. I struggle
to find artists whose work really moves me.
That only happens once or twice a year, and that’s fine by me. It’s a bit like human relationships. Our criteria for selecting films has to do
with feelings. With too many films, it
would be hard for me to be in love with all of them. That’s the reason why I don’t have such a
thick catalogue like other production companies.

TO: I work mainly with young filmmakers, but
there are a couple of exceptions. For
example, Keiichi Tanaami. He is the eldest
artist that I work with, but also the most open. Tanaami is 74 years old, is extremely well
known in Japan, and has had an exceptional career. His work inspires me because he’s so truly open
and fresh in his ideas. He’s so curious
and doesn’t set any boundaries for himself.
That’s why at 74 he has created his own artistic world. That’s my dream. After all, he’s the first artist that I worked
with [when I established CaRTe bLaNChe].

TO: It’s a bit like the mise-en-scène in cinema. Daily, I toil with the mise-en-scène and I
love it. I love to help create a certain
creative voice that gives people a kind of desire to live life. People need that. The possibility of that is the function of
cinema for me and I think it is reflected in the films that I select. And it perhaps affects the kind of films that
I decide to produce. I greatly value the
production process of my auteurs – I am very sensitive to the needs of the
artist at work and I concern myself with all the small details. I must
admit that I love directors who are workaholics, even slightly obsessive. In my daily life as a cineaste I am also a
bit obsessive.

[Okamoto drinks
tea in a split screen with a tea-drinking scene from Yumi Joung’s Love Games (2012)]

TO: I think some of the big festivals take short films
as a kind of a test. A short film before
a long film as a kind of apprentice piece.
In my view, that’s not the right way to look at it. This format is perfect for demonstrating true
creativity. That is particularly the
case with animation. I often find that the
truly creative and extraordinarily interesting animated films are all short
films. When one makes long films, one
needs a script and a certain kind of format.
It’s a much more conventional medium [than short films]. It constrains creativity. From my point-of-view, it’s easier for
filmmakers to express themselves using the short film format. As I said, there are festivals who understand
the trailblazing nature of short films, and there are festivals who don’t get it. I think the Berlinale totally gets it. That’s why the Berlinale is a natural fit for
my films. And for the past three years I
have been lucky to have the chance to show films at the Berlinale.

Narrator: The film WONDER by Mirai Mizue is currently competing
in the Shorts category. Here [5:58-] is
an exclusive sample of the film for our audience.

[there is
also a short clip of Yoriko Mizushiri’s Futon
(2012) at the very end]

Mirai Mizue (MM) was interviewed by ARTE as part of the KurzSchluss short film programme at the
Berlinale earlier this month with his CaRTe bLaNChe
producer Tamaki Okamoto (TO) acting
as his interpreter. You can currently watch
the six-minute interview at Zoom
– Die Kurzfilme der Berlinale Shorts.
But, as television stations have a habit of deleting the online content
after a certain period of time, I have written up an English transcript of the
interview. I have omitted Okamoto's interpretation and done my own translation of Mizue's answers (with assistance, as ever, from my fluently trilingual husband) I have also eliminated “ums” and other non-essential
expressions to cut to the essence of the answers.

The
highlights of this interview for me are Mirai Mizue’s kimono featuring a print
of images from WONDER and Tamaki Okamoto’s stunning hairstyle. The questions are rather pedestrian – they
seem to be a list of questions to be asked of all the animators – but Mizue’s
answers are fascinating. I love how his
face transforms into an expression of mischievous delight at the end when he is asked to draw something for them and he
whips out a handful of markers from the sleeves of his kimono. Priceless.

ARTE: Are you living animation?

MM: I think that everything I do in my daily life
is related to animation. I feel animation
all the time, whatever I do.

ARTE:
What was the first image of your film?

MM: It is just a simple black point. It signifies the starting point of
drawing.

ARTE:
How much did your film cost?

TO: 20,000 - 25,000€

ARTE: Who are you inspired by?

MM: For classic animation, I admire animators
like Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren.
I also like animators like Georges Schwizgebel for the way they use
music in their work.

ARTE: What’s the story?

MM: The story does not necessarily have to come
from me. The audience can make the stories
themselves after seeing my films. I just
want to make animation with colour, form, and music in order to make people
feel happiness or some other emotion. The
story will be different for each audience member because they will each react uniquely
to their experience of the film.

ARTE:
Do you draw every day?

MM: Yes, WONDER, was a project where I actually had
to draw every day for 365 days.
Initially, I had to force myself to draw every day for the project. At the beginning, the goal was just to
complete the daily task for the animation film, but after a while - and this was
a new experience for me - the situation changed.
I was no longer drawing just for the film but I was overcome with a
sensation of taking great pleasure from drawing and I wanted to feel that
sensation every day.

ARTE: Can you make a drawing for us?

[MM pulls
markers out of his kimono sleeves and sets about drawing on a sheet of plain
white paper]

For her
latest minimalist animation, Snow Hut
(かまくら/ Kamakura, 2013), Yoriko
Mizushiri has returned to her roots in Aomori Prefecture. Kamakura
snow huts are synonymous with the northern reaches of Tohoku. Dug out of a mound of tightly packed snow, kamakura range in size from small nooks
for a candle and some small offerings to the gods to large snow huts for people
to enjoy a winter dish such as nabe
(hotpot) or grilled dishes (see: Yokote
Kamakura Matsuri, Restaurant
Kamakura-mura, and Iizama Ouedan).

Snow Hut screened at the Berlinale earlier
this month as part of the Shorts Mix (KurzSchluss)
programme. On the ARTE television screening the film followed Atsushi Wada’s The Great Rabbit (2012) which won
the Silver Bear in 2012. Aesthetically,
Yoriko Mizushiri’s work has much in common with that of Atsushi Wada. They both share an interest in the concept of
“ma” (間) – in art this is often referred to as negative
space. In art that concerns itself
with “ma”, the objects in themselves are less important than the space that they
inhabit / defines them. The concept of “ma” is best described by the
Chinese philosopher and poet of the Zhou Dynasty Laozi (aka Lao Tsu) in the following poem:

Thirty spokes meet in the hub,

but the empty space between them

is the essence of the wheel.

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty space between it

is the essence of the pot.

Walls with windows and doors form the house,

but the empty space within it

is the essence of the house.

People whispering loud

no tangible sense

body language

food for thought

this is the essence of the negative space

- Laozi (老子)

Mizushiri
and Wada both express this using very thinly drawn lines and minimalist
settings. Mizushiri’s unique, abstract
approach to her work plays with our expectations as spectators. Objects are shown in close up and are often
ambiguous – what looks like a snow hut from an extreme long shot looks more
like a person with a mushroom-shaped head curled up in a ball in a closer shot. The
perspective changes as if the camera were circling around the figure. An extreme close-up a few beats later shows a
needle and thread sewing through the figure suggesting it is not really a
person after all.

In Mizushiri’s
director’s statement, she explains some of her artistic intentions: "The snow in my hometown is very soft
and innocently beautiful. This film is calm and clean as much as the snow that
I remember. There is no questionable or hidden meaning. All the movements and
expressions in the film are simple and universal" (Source). The ambiguity of Mizushiri’s imagery;
however, will have spectator’s wondering at its meaning. As with her sensual film, Futon
(2012), each spectator will have their own unique response to Snow Hut, which is much more likely to
be a sensory experience than an intellectual one. Adding to the mysterious beauty of the film
is the music by Kengo Tokusashi (徳差健悟, b.1980). Like Mizushiri, Tokusashi is also a native
of Aomori Prefecture – most famous for his work composing instrumental tracks
for the video game Final Fantasy XIII-2 (2011).

Yoriko Mizushiri (水尻自子, b.
1984) is a freelance film director who graduated from Joshibi University of Art
and Design. You can follow Mizushiri on tumblr and twitter, or check out her official
website shiripro. Her film Futon
won a number of prizes in Japan including the prestigious Renzo Kinoshita Prize
at Hiroshima and the New Face Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival. It has
also been a big hit at international festivals, making the short list for
Cartoon Brew’s most
well liked animated short of 2013 and winning Best of the Festival at LIAF
2013. Snow Hut made the Jury Selection at this year’s Japan Media Arts
Festival.

19 February 2014

“Wonder” is
the word I would use to describe the emotion that I felt when I first
discovered the animation of Norman
McLaren as a child exploring the NFB video tape collection in my local library. I had been exposed to NFB animation in
school, but this was something new and exciting, and it changed my understanding
of animation forever. I imagine that feeling
of wonder is what Mirai Mizue and
hispeers (Kunio Katō, Akino Kondoh,
among others) felt when Professor Masahiro
Katayama (read: In
Memory Of) introduced them to the world of independent animation as
undergraduates at Tama Art University in the early 2000s. Thus, it was moving to see that Mizue had
dedicated his latest animated short, the aptly named WONDER (2014) to his late sensei.

I am reminded
of that sense of wonder whenever I see a new film by Mirai Mizue because like
Norman McLaren, he is constantly challenging himself with innovative animation
projects. WONDER is the end result of the
WONDER 365
ANIMATION PROJECT executed by Mizue between April 1, 2012 and March 31,
2013. In this project, Mizue set himself
the goal of producing a one-second film – 24 images – per day for 365 days with
the support of sponsors. At the
completion of that year, Mizue’s producers, CaRTe bLanChe, set up a
kickstarter campaign to transform the resulting sequence of 8,760 images
into a complete film (8 minutes in length) – including a 35mmm print and a soundtrack by the acoustic
band the Pascals – that could be sent to
international festivals. So far, WONDER (see:
official website) has made the Jury
Selection at the Japan
Media Arts Festival, and last week it competed in the shorts competition at
the Berlinale.

Mizue
animated WONDER using his signature “cell animation” technique that he has
been wowing audiences with since his debut animation Fantastic Cell in 2003. The
cells in question refer not to celluloid (as in the traditional animation
technique “cel animation”), but to organic cells which make up the basic
structures of the weird and wonderful creatures that Mizue brings to life in
his abstract films. In the programme to the Berlinale, Mizue’s technique is
compared to a colour organ (Farbenklavier), “in
which visual effects are produced when a musical key is struck,” they describe Mizue’s latest film as “a journey to the world of cells and structures.”
(Source: Berlinale). In addition to the cells animation, WONDER features a wide range of abstract paintings that by turns complement and contrast with each other.

Mizue does
not use storyboards in planning his films, but instead improvises using his
intuition. This imparts a lyrical quality
to his work and results in a film in which every new transformation surprises the
viewer like fireworks exploding in the sky.
When presented on a programme with his fellow CALF
animators, whose work often explores deep and troubling psychological
issues, Mizue’s films lift up the spirits with their warm colour palettes and they inspire audiences with their creativity.
Thanks in part to the Pascals’ upbeat soundtrack, WONDER is Mizue’s most
joyous film to date. The colours dance
across the screen with an ease that belies the tremendous amount of hard work
and dedication that went into its meticulous execution.

WONDER will
be screened along with 14 other shot by Mirai Mizue at the Human Trust Cinema
Shibuya on February 22nd.
They are also hosting an exhibition of the animator’s illustrations
called WONDER FULL until the end of the month.
Learn more at the official website WONDER FULL. Clips of the film from the WONDER 365 ANIMATION
PROJECT can be found of Mizue’s official Vimeo and Youtube profiles. Keep an eye out for WONDER at international festivals because it is a real treat for the senses when seen on the big screen.

12 February 2014

The
devastation that the Tōhoku tsunami and its aftermath wreaked on the communities
on the Pacific coast of northeastern Honshu in March 2011 has been described by
many observers as resembling a war zone.
In his latest experimental short film, Soliton (2013), Isamu
Hirabayashi uses this motif as a metaphor to express the lingering trauma left
in the wake of the tsunami. Soliton had its international premiere this this week at the
Berlinale as part of its Generation
14plus Short Film programme.

Most of the
film is shot from the perspective of a man looking downwards as he walks over
uneven terrain. The man’s legs, garbed
in military camouflage, move at a slow, deliberate pace. The sound of his feet crunching as he walks
is interspersed with the sounds of gunfire, high-pitched buzzing, and
garbled radio noises that create the impression of a modern war zone. It is a disorientating and unusual
perspective. The lurching of the camera creates a sense of unease to the point
of near nausea.

Hirabayashi
denies us an establishing shot of the landscape for the first 7 minutes of this
12 minute film. Instead, he forces us to
examine the minutiae of the terrain to see the scars left by disaster: beach
interrupted by corrugated tin that may once have been a roof or shed of some kind,
concrete with rivulets worn into it by water, concrete interrupted by
vegetation, the earth cluttered with debris.
Finally, the man's leg is freeze framed and turned into an animation of dots
next to the formula for a soliton wave.

In the world
of mathematics and physics, a soliton is a self-reinforcing / non-dissipating
wave that was first observed by the Scottish civil engineer John Scott Russell
(learn more about solitons here and here)
in a canal. Although they are difficult
to observe in mid-ocean, many speculate that a tsunami wave is an example of a naturally
occurring soliton. For me,
Hirabayashi’s use of this scientific term for the title of his film brings up
many of the thoughts and feelings I had as I watched the Tōhoku tsunami footage
on March 11, 2011. When one lives in
coastal Japan, one is acutely aware of the theoretical threat of tsunami. There are markers of the levels that previous
tsunami reached, regular evacuation drills, tsunami and earthquake
resistant shelters, and man-made tsunami barriers. But knowing the scientific likelihood that a severe
tsunami may come during one’s lifetime is not the same as the reality of the experience of the event itself. Scientific knowledge
cannot prepare an individual or a community for its physical and psychological
impact. I found myself reacting viscerally to Hirabayashi’s film as it brought up the
shock I felt at the human impact of the tsunami on 3/11 all over again. There is this wonderfully contemplative shot
of the ocean as if looking down from the sky.
The deceptively calm-looking ocean gives no hint in that moment that when
the conditions are right it can wield an unimaginable, deadly force.

The man
continues to walk, through puddles and ragged earth, through thicker and thicker piles of
debris littered with the signs of lives destroyed including a lone tatami
mat, a single shoe, an open photo album, a child’s doll. The walk continues until the man encounters
the feet of a child in shoes with a heart pattern on them holding a stuffed toy
(the
Berlinale description of the film differs from the screener that I saw – I noticed
no black and white in the opening and they also describe the girl as being
barefoot). The man stops and places the shovel we did not see he was carrying
until now gently into the sand, suggesting that he is part of the recovery
effort.

In case any
spectators were uncertain as to the setting of this film, the closing credits
make it clear with a series of still images of buildings destroyed by the Tōhoku
tsunami. The text of the closing credits
are artfully shaped around these monuments to lives once lived. The images chosen for the closing credits reminded me
of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome) – the skeletal remains of the Hiroshima
Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall destroyed by the A-bomb. These shells of buildings are poignant
symbols of humanity's frailty: for all of our technological advances, we have still so
much to learn. The emotional impact of Soliton’s imagery is heightened by the excellent music
of Takashi Watanabe – a long-time Hirabayashi
collaborator.

Many short
film fans will be familiar with Hirabayashi’s Noburo
Ofuji Award winning animation 663114
(2011), which tackled the long-term consequences to the environment due to the
nuclear disaster that came on the heels of the tsunami. Soliton
continues Hirabayashi’s consideration of the impact of these events but from a
new and unique point-of-view. Definitely
keep an eye out for Soliton at
international festivals in the coming year.
It is the kind of film that will affect you on more than one sensory
level. If you are unfamiliar with
Hirabayashi’s experimental work, I recommend checking out his YouTube channel. A Story Constructed of 17
Pieces of Space and 1 Maggot (2007) is a personal favourite of mine. 663114 appears on the DVD/BD